Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Augmented Reality, Ballistics, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, Fireworks, General Musings, Government, Guns, movies, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Preparedness, Privacy, Science Fiction, Society, Space, tech, UFO, Violence, Wired, YouTube | Tags: ammunition, augmented reality, ballistics, blogging, Boeing, Cold War, drone, drones, guns, Guns.com, jim downey, laser, movies, North Dakota, predictions, Science Fiction, space, technology, The Thing, USSR, video, Watch the skies, www youtube
That’s from the 1951 classic The Thing from Another World, one of the first (and defining) science fiction movies which set the stage for much of what was to come even to the present day.
It was also very much a product of the early Cold War era, reflecting the fear* of the USSR and atomic weaponry. This is typical — science fiction usually is a reflection of (or commentary on) the technology and social conditions of the era when it was created.
So, what to make of two news items which showed up this week?
Here’s the first:
First State Legalizes Taser Drones for Cops
It is now legal for law enforcement in North Dakota to fly drones armed with everything from Tasers to tear gas thanks to a last-minute push by a pro-police lobbyist.
With all the concern over the militarization of police in the past year, no one noticed that the state became the first in the union to allow police to equip drones with “less than lethal” weapons. House Bill 1328 wasn’t drafted that way, but then a lobbyist representing law enforcement—tight with a booming drone industry—got his hands on it.
And here’s the second:
Welcome to the World, Drone-Killing Laser Cannon
Hang on to your drone. Boeing’s developed a laser cannon specifically designed to turn unmanned aircraft into flaming wreckage.
The aerospace company’s new weapon system, which it publicly tested this week in a New Mexico industrial park, isn’t quite as cool as what you see in Star Wars—there’s no flying beams of light, no “pew! pew!” sound effects. But it is nonetheless a working laser cannon, and it will take your drone down.
* * *
Instead of a massive laser mounted on a dedicated truck, the compact system is small enough to fit in four suitcase-sized boxes and can be set up by a pair of soldiers or technicians in just a few minutes. At the moment, it’s aimed primarily at driving drones away from sensitive areas.
I’m already seeing posts by friends on social media complaining about drones being operated by annoying neighbors, with discussion about what possible solutions there might be to deal with them (both by legal recourse and um, more informal approaches). There have been a number of news items already about people who have shot down drones, and there’s even a company advertising a specific kind of shotgun ammunition for just that.
“Watch the skies!”, indeed.
Jim Downey
*As good an explanation as any.
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Expert systems, Humor, Predictions, Science Fiction, tech, Travel | Tags: Alzheimer's, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Expert, Her Final Year, humor, jim downey, John Bourke, LinkedIn, Native, Nir Eyal, predictions, Science Fiction, technology, travel
Interesting post on LinkedIn which may sound familiar:
Here’s how Native works: every time I need to do anything related to travel, I just ask Tim to handle it. Tim lives inside Native and while he appears to be a human, I’m not 100% sure he is. For all I know he may be a bot, artificial intelligence, or any number of people working behind the scenes under the persona of the fresh-faced Tim. To be honest, I don’t much care. Every time I need him he’s there, ready to assist me.
For example, I recently had to book a gnarly itinerary in and out of two countries using various airline loyalty points. Normally, booking this sort of trip would have taken me hours of comparing prices, flight times, connection difficulty, and frequent flyer point requirements. Instead, I just opened the app and told Tim what I needed in plain English — like sending a text message. Then, I went about my day and an hour later I received a notification from Tim telling me he found the best two options. Would I like itinerary A or itinerary B? I picked one and he booked the flight. Done!
I didn’t have to use any dropdown menus, sift through hundreds of options, or spend half an hour attempting to pay for my ticket only to learn that the price I wanted was suddenly not available. Nope! I left it up to Tim to handle everything.
Perhaps this will help jiggle your memory a bit:
“What do you want, Seth?”
“Sorry to bother you, Jon, but you’ll need to come back immediately. Business. I’ve made the arrangements. Transport waiting for you in town, take you to Denver. Then commercial flight home.” Audio only. That meant a lot. Tighter beam, easier to encode and keep private. Security protocol.
He wondered if something had gone wrong with the Hawking, the experimental long-range ship undergoing trials, based out at Titan. That was about the only thing he could think of that would require his cutting short his first vacation in four years. No use in asking. “All right. Give me a few minutes to pack my things, and I’ll get started.”
“Understood.”
“And contact my family, let them know I’m on my way back. ”
“Will do. Anything else?”
“Not at present. See you when I get there.”
That’s from page 2 of Communion of Dreams. Same thing, except Seth is named “Tim” in Native.
Hmm … perhaps I should start selling my services as a futurist … 😉
Jim Downey
Thanks to my friend and co-author John Bourke for the tip!5
Filed under: Bipolar, Book Conservation, Brave New World, Connections, Depression, Discover, General Musings, Mars, Predictions, Ray Bradbury, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, book conservation, bookbinding, Charles Lindbergh, Chris Hadfield, Globe and Mail, jim downey, Legacy Bookbindery, Mars, Martians, predictions, Ray Bradbury, science, Science Fiction, space, St. Cybi's Well, technology, The Martian Chronicles, writing
The Globe and Mail has a wonderful essay by Col Chris Hadfield as an introduction to a new edition of Ray Bradbury‘s The Martian Chronicles. Here’s an excerpt:
Bradbury’s Mars offered unlimited new opportunity for exploration and discovery, and expansion of human awareness. Yet virtually every step in the Chronicles, as through much of human history, is a misstep. Mutual ignorance and distrust between normally peaceful peoples leads to violence and death. Greed causes unfathomably bad behavior; uncomfortably reminiscent of gold-hungry Conquistadors in the New World, five hundred years previous. Anger and frustration at the constraints of an intensely bureaucratic society somehow permit the craziest of personal behavior. And the ultimate threat of the destruction of it all somehow draws everyone back into the maelstrom, as if there is no escape. As if we all have a necessity to accept the consequences of everyone’s actions, and take our punishment, no matter how deadly.
Bradbury’s inclusion of the repeated patterns of human behavior, right down to inadvertent genocide caused by external pestilence and unfamiliar disease, makes The Martian Chronicles an ageless cautionary tale. It made me pause and ask myself – could it be possible that we are forever unable to go beyond who we were? Will every great opportunity of discovery be tainted, tarred and eventually destroyed by our own clumsy, brutish hand?
Are we so cursed by our own tragic humanity?
Wrestling with that very question … and depicting it … has been at the heart of my struggle to write St Cybi’s Well. And wrestling with my own demons at the same time has led me into some very dark moments, particularly over the last couple of months.
But there is hope. Here is the closing of Hadfield’s essay:
Their spaceship will be improbable, and the voyage will have been long. But as our first emissaries thump down onto Mars, stand up and look around, they will see who the Martians really are. And with that sense of belonging will come the responsibility and appreciation that has allowed us to flourish and grow on Earth for millennia, in spite of ourselves. By the time we land on Mars and first step onto the dusty, red soil, it will be alien no longer. We will know that we are home. And that may be what saves us.
As chance would have it, yesterday I started working on another conservation project which, in its own way, also affirms how exploration may save us. You’ve probably heard of the author, who had his own struggles and failings. Here’s the title page:
Maybe there’s hope for all of ‘we’, after all.
Jim Downey
Thanks to Margo Lynn for sharing the Hadfield essay.
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Google, movies, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: Alexei Oreskovic, Amazon, art, augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Google, jim downey, Matt Weinberger, predictions, Science Fiction, Soli, technology, writing
From the beginning of Chapter 6:
There was just one other person in the room, standing at the side of the holo platform, hands dancing over a control board only he could see.
* * *
Jon looked to the dance Ng’s hands played in the air. “About ready?”
Ng said nothing, but just his fingers tapped a command in the air. Instantly, there appeared an image above the holo projector. It was the artifact, pretty much exactly as Jon remembered it from the first meeting a week ago.
There are many such passages in Communion of Dreams, just part of the augmented reality technology which exists at the time of the book. The basic explanation is that the user is wearing contact lenses which allow one to see a virtual reality overlay on the real world, and then within that overlay you can manipulate virtual objects/controls thanks to hand-tracking. When I wrote the book I figured that such technology would be available eventually …
… and here it is, even sooner than I expected:
Google’s new finger control technology is straight out of a science fiction movie
* * *
The company’s lab for advanced projects showed off new technology on Friday that lets users move their fingers in the air to control objects in the virtual world.
It’s called Project Soli, and it uses radar waves to detect precise finger movements or finger “micromotions.”
The result is something that looks like it’s from a science-fiction movie such as Minority Report or Her, in which characters manipulated virtual objects by gracefully moving their hands or fingers in the air.
Bingo.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Civil Rights, Connections, General Musings, Humor, Marketing, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech | Tags: augmented reality, autonomous vehicles, blogging, Expert, humor, jim downey, predictions, science, Science Fiction, ScienceDaily, short story, technology, writing
“Here ya go!” said the salesman with almost sincere enthusiasm as he handed the key fob across the desk to me. “Your Googel AutoDrive Sedan is ready and waiting!”
“Thanks,” I said, with little desire to mask my exhaustion. I hated buying cars. I took the fob, stood up to go.
“Oh, one last thing …”
I cringed. Looked at him. He still had a gleam in his eye. Which I knew meant he hadn’t finished toying with me yet. “Yes?”
“In going through your profile, I noted that your credit score was … a tad low.” His smile widened just a bit.
“So? I financed it through MegaLoan. You got your money.”
“Well, yes,” he said. “But I wasn’t talking about the financing … ”
I waited to see where this was going. I was sure it wasn’t going to be someplace I liked.
He didn’t disappoint me. His smile broadened even more. “As you know, the AutoDrive system is programmed to consider every possible factor in road safety and benefit to society — in full accordance with all relevant laws.”
“Yes?”
“Well … how shall I put this … your low credit score means that in some situations, AutoDrive may elect to …” he paused to savor the effect “… maximize the benefits to society in the event of an accident.”
“Sorry?”
“Well, if the situation warrants, someone who has a better credit score … who provides a greater benefit to society, as shown by their assets and wealth creation … may be deemed less expendable than you are.”
“WHAT?!?!?!”
I had hoped my outrage would startle him. Instead, he licked his lips. “Now, now, not to worry. There’s an easy way to mitigate the chances of that happening.”
I sighed. “How much?”
“Well, we have a Net Worth insurance policy we offer which will indemnify society against loss of more valuable citizens, available on a sliding scale …”
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, Expert systems, General Musings, Humor, Marketing, movies, NYT, Predictions, Publishing, Science, Science Fiction, Society, tech | Tags: art, artificial intelligence, augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Drea Cooper, DVD, Emma Cott, Expert, Grindr, humor, jim downey, Matt McMullen, New York Times, predictions, Robotica, robotics, science, Science Fiction, Seth, sex, technology, Tinder, Topless Robot, VHS, video, Zackary Canepari
Via Topless Robot, this article/video from the New York Times:
Matt McMullen has proved that some people are willing to spend thousands on sex dolls.
* * *
Mr. McMullen’s new project, which he is calling Realbotix, is an attempt to animate the doll. He has assembled a small team that includes engineers who have worked for Hanson Robotics, a robotics lab that produces shockingly lifelike humanoid robots.Mr. McMullen is first focusing on developing convincing artificial intelligence, and a robotic head that can blink and open and close its mouth. He’s also working to integrate other emerging technologies, like a mobile app that acts like a virtual assistant and companion, and virtual reality headsets that can be used separately or in tandem with the physical doll.
It’s accepted wisdom that many new technologies come into their own and are quickly disseminated through the public when a way can be found to use them for sex and/or the depictions of same. Printing. VHS tapes. DVDs. The internet. Smartphone Apps like Tinder or Grindr.
So why not artificial intelligence?
Which isn’t the way I saw the technology for an expert system/assistant like Seth developing, but hey, I suppose whatever works …
Jim Downey
Filed under: Augmented Reality, Connections, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, tech | Tags: augmented reality, blogging, Charles Lieber, Communion of Dreams, Devin Powell, Harvard, jim downey, Nature Nanotechnology, predictions, Science Fiction, Smithsonian, technology
From Chapter 14 of Communion of Dreams:
“No problems with either hand since your incident with the artifact?”
“No. They were sore last night when I first woke up, but I figured that was due to the shock or whatever it was.”
She nodded. “You know how the palmkey is installed and works, right?”
“Yeah, sure. It’s a thin film injected just under the skin, forms a fluid web across the palm that is programmed to function as a close-range transceiver. Simple enough.”
News item this morning:
A Flexible Circuit Has Been Injected Into Living Brains
What if the next gadget for sending messages to your friends wasn’t a watch strapped to your wrist or a phone stuffed in your pocket—but an electronic device embedded in your brain? Now, a new kind of flexible circuit has brought us one step closer to this science fiction future. Implanted via injection, a grid of wires only a few millimeters across can insinuate itself with living neurons and eavesdrop on their chatter, offering a way for electronics to interface with your brain activity.
“We’re trying to blur the distinction between electronic circuits and neural circuits,” says Charles Lieber, a nanotechnologist at Harvard University and co-author of a study describing the device this week in Nature Nanotechnology.
OK, not exactly the same thing … but pretty damned close. I’m going consider that another prediction come true.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, Brave New World, Connections, movies, Predictions, Science Fiction, Survival, Violence | Tags: artificial intelligence, augmented reality, blogging, Communion of Dreams, Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg, jim downey, predictions, Science Fiction, technology, The Last One, video, Vimeo
This is a good short, and ties in nicely with the end of Communion of Dreams:
Jim Downey
Filed under: Brave New World, Connections, Genetic Testing, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Superman, tech, Writing stuff | Tags: blogging, Chinese, Chu Ling, Communion of Dreams, ExtremeTech, genetic modification, genetics, health, jim downey, John Hewitt, predictions, science, Science Fiction, technology, writing
From Chapter 5 of Communion of Dreams, after the revelation that the Chinese orphan Chu Ling is a clone:
Jon looked around. He decided to tell them the rest of the bad news. “And that’s not all. There’s evidence that the original host had been genetically manipulated to radically change several characteristics related to intelligence.”
Bailey looked a little confused. “What’s that mean?”
Gish sighed. “It means that someone has created a better human, and now is producing copies.”
“Well, better in their eyes, anyway,” said Gates. Her voice contained a touch of bitterness.
Gee, here’s a bit of news:
Chinese scientists create first genetically modified human embryos
And so it has come to pass: Chinese scientists at the University in Guangzhou have created the first genetically modified human embryos. Although there had been rumors circulating for some time that it had already been done, until now, there has been no official scientific report.
Another prediction come true.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 